Born on the fourth of July in 1872, in Plymouth Notch in the Green Mountains of Vermont, John Calvin Coolidge, (he was always called Calvin by his family so his first name fell by the wayside) was a rock-ribbed Vermont Yankee descended from a line of Yankees that had first set foot in New England in 1630. Thrift was not a virtue in the Coolidge family, but a way of life. His mother died when he was twelve. He would carry a locket with her portrait until the day he died. “The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me. Life was never to seem the same again.” His beloved sister died only five years later, not the last loss of a loved one that would come to Calvin Coolidge. Graduating from Amherst College, he took the advice of his father and skipped law school, too expensive, and became an attorney through the traditional route of “reading law” under an experienced attorney.
In 1898 he opened a law office in Northampton, Massachusetts and gradually attracted business as a transactional attorney rather than an attorney who did litigation in court. He met his wife Grace, a teacher at a local school for the deaf, when she spied him one day in 1903 through an open window at the boarding house where he was staying. Coolidge was shaving, and was wearing his long johns and his hat. (He later explained to her that he used the hat to keep his unruly hair out of his eyes while he was shaving.) In this case opposites did attract, and for life. Grace was talkative and lively, Coolidge quiet and withdrawn. They had a very happy marriage that was blessed by two sons. Shortly after their marriage Grace was presented by Calvin with a sack with fifty-two pairs of hole filled socks in them. She asked him if he had married her so she would darn his socks. He replied no, but that he found it mighty handy that she could darn his socks! (And she did not kill him!)
Coolidge began climbing the political ladder in Northampton. He served a varied political apprenticeship, serving as Councilman, City Solicitor, Clerk of Courts, State Representative, Mayor and State Senator. His only defeat was when he ran for schoolboard, probably because he and his wife did not yet have children. His laconic response was classic Coolidge: Might give me time!
He was ever a friend of Irish Catholics and fought against the discrimination they frequently endured. Most Irish Catholics were Democrats, but that did not stop Coolidge from standing up for them. As mayor of Northampton, he developed a life long friendship with Father Joseph Gordian Daley who shared Coolidge’s love of Latin and Greek. Coolidge helped Father Daley build a mission church in Northampton. There was a great deal of compassion in this dry, unemotional Yankee.
Whatever office he held, he stressed economy, reduction of taxes and reduction of debt. In 1915 he ran for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and won. In 1918 he was elected governor of Massachusetts, running on a platform of fiscal conservatism, support of female suffrage, opposition to Prohibition and support for American involvement in World War I. 1919 cast him into the national spotlight when a Boston police strike caused lawlessness and rioting to break out. Coolidge ordered in the National Guard and tersely stated that there was no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anytime, anywhere. He won reelection that year with a victory margin seven times greater than 1918. (The Governor and Lieutenant Governor of the Bay State served only for one year terms at that time.)
At the 1920 Republican convention Coolidge found himself unexpectedly the nominee for Vice-President. Harding and Coolidge went on to win by almost a two to one margin.
The office of Vice-President seemed made for a man as quiet as Coolidge. Coolidge quickly earned the nickname of Silent Cal. The archetypal example of his terseness is when a young lady encountered him at a White House reception and said that she had bet a friend of hers that she could get him to speak three words to her. “You lose” was Coolidge’s two-word response. He seemed out-of-place in regard to the Washington social circle. When asked why he came to dinners when he said so little he responded: Got to eat somewhere.
With the sudden death of Harding from a heart attack on August 2, 1923, Silent Cal found himself suddenly President.
Coolidge faced three big tasks: to recover the integrity of the Presidency that had been tainted by the Teapot Dome Scandal during Harding’s term, to increase American prosperity, and to pay down the national debt that had accumulated during World War I. He adopted a go slow approach at first, reasoning that he was a caretaker of Harding until he was elected in his own right. He was nominated by the Republican convention in 1924 and easily won election. Personal tragedy blighted his life when his son Calvin, Jr. died from an infected foot blister that he acquired while playing tennis, dramatic proof as to how precarious life was in the era before antibiotics. Coolidge said that with the death of his son all the power and the glory of the presidency died for him.
However, personal grief did not deter him from doing his job. During his term in office he slashed spending and vetoed 50 bills. That veto total is truly remarkable when it is remembered that Coolidge’s Republican party controlled Congress each year during his term. Why he vetoed these pieces of legislation can be summed up in this quotation:
Of course, a good many proposals are made by people that have very excellent things that they would like to have the Government do, but they come from people that have no responsibility for providing ways and means by which their proposals can be carried out. I don’t think in all my experience, which has been very large with people that come before me in and out of Government with proposals for spending money, I have ever had any proposal from anyone as to what could be done to save any money. Sometimes linked with the proposal for an immediate large expenditure is the suggestion that it ultimately will result in a saving. I think that is about the extent of the outside assistance I have had in that direction.
Coolidge reduced the national debt from 22.3 billion to 16.9 billion. This was at a time when total revenue for the government was approximately four billion a year. He accomplished this while reducing taxes three times during his administration. By the ending of his term only the richest 2% of Americans paid any federal income tax.
He cut Federal spending to the bone. For Coolidge this was not just a fiscal matter, but a moral matter:
I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.
During his term in office the American people enjoyed a wave of prosperity unprecedented in either American history or the history of the World. However, Coolidge did not view prosperity as an end in itself:
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshiped.
Contrary to the spirit abroad in this country today, Coolidge was quite clear that people could not look to government to better their lives:
The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.
The Ku Klux Klan, at the height of its power, was a force to be reckoned with during Coolidge’s term, and Coolidge made it clear where he stood. Addressing the Holy Name Society in Washington, Coolidge said:
Something in all human beings makes them want to do the right thing. Not that this desire always prevails; oftentimes it is overcome and they turn towards evil. But some power is always calling them back. Ever there comes a resistance to wrongdoing. When bad conditions begin to accumulate, when forces of darkness become prevalent, always they are ultimately doomed to fail as the better angels of our nature are roused to resistance.
This was regarded by papers around the nation as a direct attack by the President on the Klan. His attitude towards racial prejudice was made clear in a letter to a gentleman who complained that a black man was seeking a GOP nomination to run for Congress in New York:
My dear Sir:
Your letter is received, accompanied by a newspaper clipping which discusses the possibility that a colored man may be the Republican nominee for Congress from one of the New York districts. Referring to this newspaper statement, you say:
“It is of some concern whether a Negro is allowed to run for Congress anywhere, at any time, in any party, in this, a white man’s country. Repeated ignoring of the growing race problem does not excuse us for allowing encroachments. Temporizing with the Negro whether he will or will not vote either a Democratic or a Republican ticket, as evidenced by the recent turnover in Oklahoma, is contemptible.”
Leaving out of consideration the manifest impropriety of the President intruding himself in a local contest for nomination, I was amazed to receive such a letter. During the war 500,000 colored men and boys were called up under the draft, not one of whom sought to evade it. They took their places wherever assigned in defense of the nation of which they are just as truly citizens as are any others. The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color, I have taken my oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race. A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else. . . .
Coolidge appointed blacks to numerous positions and fought vigorously for anti-lynching legislation in Congress. Democrat filibusters in the Senate prevented the legislation from being enacted.
Emmett Scott, the Secretary-Treasurer of Howard University summed up the feeling of most blacks towards Coolidge in a letter to the President:
This address brought great encouragement to thoughtful representatives of the twelve million colored people of the United States. The principles above stated by you include most or all of what they hold near and dear in connection with their citizenship. The one thing for which they have struggled since the Republican Party conferred upon them … freedom and enfranchisement has been this American ideal of “ordered liberty.”
The colored people suffer many disabilities among them persecution by a hooded order which seeks to exclude them from the privileges of American citizenship. They also suffer from discrimination in the Federal service and from segregation in many Departments of our government. This discrimination is a legacy which has come to your administration.
They know Calvin Coolidge. They know his traditional friendship and they know of his distinguished services in behalf of their race.
In another slap at the Klan, Coolidge coined a formulation that has entered into common usage:
Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.
Coolidge could have easily had another term if he wished, but having accomplished what he set out to do, he did not run in 1928. He did not think much of Herbert Hoover, who had served under him as Secretary of Commerce, noting privately that Hoover had given him unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad. In retirement he resisted all efforts to draw him back into the political arena, including an effort to draft him for President in 1932. Shortly before his death he noted to a friend that he felt that he no longer fitted in with the times. That was a correct assessment, and more the pity for the nation. He died on January 5, 1933, having a heart attack as he was preparing to shave. Grace found him, her life with him beginning and ending with him shaving.
I have a quotation attributed to Coolidge hanging to the door in my office that I have had hanging there since I was a young attorney. I think it sums up the man:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Our problems today are not larger than those that confronted Coolidge. Unfortunately our leaders lack the persistence, determination and honesty that Coolidge brought to the tasks that he confronted. May our nation know his like again.
“America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force. No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions. The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the Cross. The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of Divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.”
— President Calvin Coolidge – Inaugural Address – March 4, 1925
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-50
Thanks for the post, Donald, and the quotation, Quotermeister. We as a nation have dropped the Cross of which Pres. Coolidge spoke and abandoned the desire to please God. We have replaced them in the post-WW2 era with the ambition to police the world, now including oppression of our own once-free people, and to please those who profit from endless war. We can all see the results of that substitution. Foreign adventures undertaken for what seemed at the time to be laudable goals have produced separation, death, and misery for our fighting men and women, while generating vast wealth for people who never step in harm’s way. And yet the supposed objectives of our actions are abandoned arbitrarily, with the formerly reliable US literally walking away from thousands of defenseless people and vast amounts of money and materiel, without those objectives ever being accomplished. And in the meantime, we have replaced the warriors who once ran our military with milquetoasts more concerned with pronouns and DIE ideology than with building and keeping forces capable of defending ourselves and our allies. What’s wrong with this picture?
We have replaced them in the post-WW2 era with the ambition to police the world, now including oppression of our own once-free people, and to please those who profit from endless war.
The ratio of military expenditure to domestic product is as low as it has been since 1940. Ditto the number of American soldiers and sailors billeted abroad.
My only problem with the Coolidge administration was that he allowed the military to shrink in size to a dangerous level. His not interference policies with foreign government was admirable but, unfortunately, he did not fully account for foreign powers interfering with us. The result was a perception of weakness by both Japan and Germany that thrust us into WW II, a situation for which we we not prepared. It is most unfortunate that both of today’s political parties have forgotten his policies of restrained spending. Eventually, and probably sooner, we will pay for this forgotten lesson.
“The ratio of military expenditure to domestic product is as low as it has been since 1940. Ditto the number of American soldiers and sailors billeted abroad.”
Neither of which has anything to do with what I said, but whatever.
The result was a perception of weakness by both Japan and Germany that thrust us into WW II, a situation for which we we not prepared.
I have a suspicion that it was the expenditure levels of Britain, France, and the Netherlands which most interested Germany and Japan. That aside, their perceptions would have been most salient ca. 1935, not 1925. While we’re at it, I don’t think the ratio of military spending to domestic product ca. 1925 was all that low as compared to the median of the period running from 1877 to 1916. We can check.
Neither of which has anything to do with what I said, but whatever.
Actually, it refutes what you said. You don’t want to acknowledge that, that’s your problem.
Actually, it refutes what you said.
Respectfully, not really. The fact that domestic product has risen at a greater rate than military spending does not refute his point, in fact, it’s irrelevant to his point, which refers to the shift from the virtuous goals professed by Coolidge to the financial goals professed by Raytheon, et al.
which refers to the shift from the virtuous goals professed by Coolidge to the financial goals professed by Raytheon, et al.
Is the latest thesis of paulbot pests that American foreign policy since 1940 has been dictated by Raytheon, or is that just another throw away line?
Political violence is part of the human condition. I know Ron Paul fancies its a function of foreign policy officialdom who aren’t as savvy as Ron Paul, but that isn’t a serious thesis. Complaints about ‘endless war’ are inane. There’s always something going on somewhere. Latin America has been free of political violence of late, but that’s balanced by an extraordinary rate of social violence in the form of street crime. Tropical and Southern Africa suffer both the street crime and the violence from chronic insurgency (see northern Nigeria), a generalized breakdown in public order (the Congo, Central African Republic, Somalia), and a mix of the two (southern Sudan). Seven different Arab countries have suffered intramural violence in the last sixty odd years, not because of some cabal meeting in Foggy Bottom or in William Kristol’s office but because politics is played for keeps in some parts of the world. Iran and Iraq spent eight years slaughtering each other’s young men and no clue what either party got out of it but the dead bodies. It used to be red haze riff raff like Victor Navasky and Noam Chomsky wasted their time and integrity dreaming up Rube Goldberg arguments as to why the American National Security State was to blame for all of this. Now it has seeped into ordinary starboard discourse.
It used to be red haze riff raff like Victor Navasky and Noam Chomsky wasted their time and integrity dreaming up Rube Goldberg arguments as to why the American National Security State was to blame for all of this. Now it has seeped into ordinary starboard discourse.
Comment of the week Art! Take ‘er away Sam!
I’m still not seeing how ballooning healthcare costs (among other things) increasing the GDP has anything to do with Christian virtue influencing U.S. policy.
I’m still not seeing how ballooning healthcare costs (among other things) increasing the GDP has anything to do with Christian virtue influencing U.S. policy.
Gross Domestic Product is a measure of production. “Health Care Costs” do not increase the value of Gross Domestic Product.
Health Care Costs” do not increase the value of Gross Domestic Product.
Actually, yes they do. Healthcare is most certainly factored into GDP.
So, again … How about stop deflecting and explain how increasing the GDP faster than military spending has anything to do with Christian virtue influencing U.S. policy.
Actually, yes they do. Healthcare is most certainly factored into GDP.
Services provided are incorporated into the calculation of domestic product. You seem to think that measures of output are a mirage generated by increases in ‘costs’. Gross domestic product is a measure of value-added,
So, again … How about stop deflecting and explain how increasing the GDP faster than military spending has anything to do with Christian virtue influencing U.S. policy.
I did not deflect anything, you’re just confused. The ratio of military spending to domestic product is a measure of the degree to which available factors of production are devoted to military uses. That’s as low now as it has been in the last 80-odd years. The number of billets abroad is also as low as it has been in that time.
The sum total of American troops posted abroad in recent years (< 200,000), if they were deployed as a concentrated force, would suffice to occupy a country with a population similar to Saudi Arabia or Peru, so we’re coming up a trifle short on ‘policing the world’. The majority of our troops are in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The only places they have been in combat in the last 50 years have been in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Lebanon. During the Coolidge Administration we had a portfolio of overseas dependencies whose population amounted to about 12% of the population of the metropole. Evidently, that’s consistent with ‘Christian virtue’ in your mind but having air bases in Italy isn’t, go figure.
I hesitate to speak for Frank, Art … but “Police the World” is a common phrase which, under no circumstances actually implies that American constables are on every street corner on the planet. Perhaps you’re the one who is confused, but I suspect that you are aware of this and choose to be obtuse here.
To paraphrase a frequent commenter on this blog: It’s exceedingly doubtful that military spending increasing slower than GDP refutes the idea that America’s policy goals have strayed from Christian virtue, which was your original thesis.
I’ve given you every opportunity to defend your thesis, Art, but instead you’ve chosen to nitpick and rant about isolationism. I’m forced to conclude that your original thesis is indefensible.
Personally, if I wanted to give an example of America losing her Christian virtue, I wouldn’t have chosen the military example, (have legions of Americans ever actually marched forth “armed, not with the sword, but with the Cross” ?) but would, instead, direct attention to the Dobbs decision, where Justice Alito clearly and eloquently lays out the sum of Abortion law in these United States. We have truly moved from a nation which defends life as a gift from Almighty God to a nation which defends the “right” to extinguish life
I hesitate to speak for Frank, Art … but “Police the World” is a common phrase which, under no circumstances actually implies that American constables are on every street corner on the planet. Perhaps you’re the one who is confused, but I suspect that you are aware of this and choose to be obtuse here.
IOW, it’s a rhetorical game and doesn’t actually mean anything. And I’m the problem here for thinking expressions should actually describe something and not be used to manipulate people.
To paraphrase a frequent commenter on this blog: It’s exceedingly doubtful that military spending increasing slower than GDP refutes the idea that America’s policy goals have strayed from Christian virtue, which was your original thesis.
Your last complaint was that I’d done something naughty by taking his statement of policy goals at face value. Before babbling about ‘Christian virtue’, why not come to a secure understanding of what you fancy those policy goals were and are?
I’ve given you every opportunity to defend your thesis, Art, but instead you’ve chosen to nitpick and rant about isolationism. I’m forced to conclude that your original thesis is indefensible.
I’ve defended it. You pretend I haven’t.
“I hesitate to speak for Frank…”
CAG, you’re doing fine. Your abortion example is much better than mine. I used the military because it was Coolidge’s quotation about marching to war that prompted me to comment on the postwar subordination of God’s laws to human greed and ambition, using the “endless war” mindset as my primary example, and lamenting how it has corrupted the nation’s foreign affairs and led to much misery. I am no isolationist. But I do subscribe to the founders’ notion that the virtues should be the basis for government policies and actions. Obviously I did a poor job of making my point.
God bless all here.
using the “endless war” mindset as my primary example, and lamenting how it has corrupted the nation’s foreign affairs and led to much misery.
There is no such mindset.
“We are ending the era of endless wars,” Trump said. It is not the job of American forces “to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of,” he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-wars/trump-to-west-point-grads-we-are-ending-the-era-of-endless-wars-idUSKBN23K0PR
Trump sure wouldn’t have heard of them, as bone ignorant as he is of history. The problem of course is that bumper sticker solutions to foreign policy problems just don’t work. Afghanistan after two decades could not withstand the Taliban. On the other hand we have had troops in South Korea for 73 years and we have a strong and prosperous ally as a result. Trump had some big foreign policy achievements, the Abraham Accords for instance, and keeping Iran reigned in, but he leaned too far to isolationism for my taste, although he is quite preferable to the present blunderers in power.
“to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of,”
That’s not an apposite description of any shooting war in which we have participated since 1945.
The point of the Trump quote was not to argue either for (or against) the legitimacy or validity of its contents, but to demonstrate that various views (or “mindsets”, if you prefer) actually do exist and are held by various ranks. It would seem futile to deny their existence outright when there are ample examples.
The point of the Coolidge quote from his Inauguration Address was to provide a prime example of what the Rorate Caeli tweet described as his “love for God, love for Country”. It would seem that he wanted to reassure his fellow countrymen (and the world at large), that America is more concerned with doing what’s right than showing its might, and that it would pursue this with its typical vigor. However, what’s particularly striking (and admirable) was not only the repeated mention of God, but the specific mention of the Cross. As Rorate Caeli noted: “the more one reads his speeches… the more one sees how precious his rhetoric was.”
Never explain Quotermeister! Stay in character! You are this blog’s beloved Quote Master and a cherished member of the blog’s commenters.
The point of the Trump quote was not to argue either for (or against) the legitimacy or validity of its contents,
The experience of this exchange is akin to trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
In 1922, the United States had a population of about 110 million and a portfolio of overseas dependencies with a population of about 15 million. We had Haiti under occupation from 1915 to 1934, the Dominican Republic under occupation from 1916 to 1924 (which Coolidge discontinued), and an expeditionary force in Nicaragua from 1927 to 1933. We also had treaties with Cuba and Panama which formally compromised their sovereignty in ways that have been unusual in the years since the 1st World War (the Roosevelt Administration abrogated these). I’m told pointing this out is a ‘nitpick’ because reasons. The military was certainly proportionately smaller during the inter-war period than it has been at any time since; that’s a valid point, but it sits rather ill with the contention made during this thread that the government’s propensity to devote productive resources to military uses is a datum of no interest.
Thank you for the kind words, Mr. McClarey!